On the topic of interactive entertainment

Monthly Archives: January 2012

All right, I’ve just sent the opening scenario to Marius Müller. The other participants signed up are jojo, Carl Muckenhoupt, and Tom Blawgus. The current plan is to send the story around to everybody 2 or 3 times, in order to end up with about 8-12 sections. Should make for an interesting result.

Until we get close to the end, I think I’ll still be accepting new participants to slot into the cycle, just because it’s a smaller group than usual.

Inspired by the IF Whispers projects of years past, I’d like to organize a new incarnation. The process will be fairly similar to before; I’ll create an Inform 7 source file defining a basic setting, then pass it on to the next person. They’ll add on to it however they like, and I’ll combine it with the original code to make sure that it compiles. The next person in line will receive only the last person’s submission, with any dummy objects added that are needed to make the last person’s code compile. If they reference a “goat” animal defined by a preceding person, for example, I’ll add a “goat” animal with as few properties as are necessary to get the code to compile. In effect, each contributor works from only the immediately preceding section of code.

Once the last person goes, it loops back around to the first and each person makes another submission, until there’s about 10-12 sections completed. (If there’s a ton of contributors, we’ll just have everyone go once, but this should keep things interesting even if there’s only a small group.) Participants have 48 hours to return their submission before being skipped.

But there’s another twist: Everyone should also submit an extension (or extra chapter, if you don’t want to bother with extensions) which defines three new additions: one or two new properties — of things, people, rooms, etc. — and one or two facts about the world (in comments), such as “ASK/TELL conversation”, “no princess rescuing”. The subsequent authors must make use of all of these defined properties somehow — either defining objects with such properties, or code that refers to objects with such properties in some way — and must also respect the world-building facts. Each person must submit at least one property and at least one fact unless they take the following option: an author may choose to nullify a previous property or fact, in exchange for adding only one new property or one new fact, rather than a total of three new additions.

In either case, the new rule set takes effect starting from that point on.

If you’re interested, please send me an email with the subject IF Whispers Interest. I’d like to get this project started in about a week or so.